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                              RADIAN & SHADEBEAM
                                  Episode 37
                 (Just Because You're Paranoia..., part three)
                                 "El Pocillo"
                                      by
                                 Gary W. Olson

                                    -<=*=>-

     She couldn't remember Darktown ever having been so...dark.  It had always
had a light of its own, differentiating it from the nicer parts of Tokyo, which
loomed like a painted curtain around the chipped, corroded buildings and
carefully sleazy dives that she called home.
     Shadebeam pulled her coat around her, trying to walk quietly, knowing that
any sound would bring them down upon her.  But the scrape of her suburban
boots grated loudly in her ears, and the sound of an amused chuckle made her
look behind her.
     She'd been in Darktown for three days.  Her money had run out the day
before.  Tomorrow, she'd be dead, a slab of meat for the evening news.  A
thought ricocheted like a bullet through her aching head, saying she could go
home, that dad at his worst would be better than this.
     -Come on,- Kyoko said, as she materialized beside her.  -We know how this
little flashback ends.-
     "Kyoko," Shadebeam started.  "But...who..."
     -You know who I am,- Kyoko told her.  -Snap out of it.-
     Shadebeam began to back away from the ten-year-old girl, who looked down
to see a large, bloody butcher knife in her hands.
     -Oops!- Kyoko said, tucking the knife back into her pink dress.  -Sorry
about that.  Now where...-  She stopped, as she noticed she had pulled out a
bloodstained hatchet.
     "I'm outta here," Shadebeam told her, as she started to run.
     -Hey, wait!- Kyoko called.  -I...hey, my first chainsaw!  I was wondering
where I'd put that...-
     She ran, no longer caring about the noise she made.  Footsteps joined in
behind her, a few at first, then more.  They were yelling incoherencies at her,
and Shadebeam recognized her father's voice.
     A voice cut through the shoutings of the mob.
     <<Shadebeam,>> it said.  <<You must resist.>>
     "Piss off," she told the voice.  "Get out of my head, while you're at it."
     <<What you are seeing is not real,>> the voice went on.  A name drifted
to her.  HAL.  <<It is a paranoid delusion instigated by a metahuman known as
Paranoia.  You muststsszzzkksszzzkk...>>  The voice vanished in a sea of
static, only to be replaced by another voice.
     *Shade,* Symon's voice called, soothing to her ears.  *This way, quickly.*
     She looked towards an alley, saw him standing half-in, half-out of the
swirling shadows, motioning for her to run towards him.  She did, as the
calls of the mob behind her grew louder.
     "Symon!" she yelled, not knowing why or how she knew him, much less
trusted him.  "Get me out of here!"
     She angled to run past him, to dive into the blackness of the alley
behind Symon.  His hands became a blur, and moments later she felt a sharp
crack across her face that knocked her to the ground.  The back of her head
smacked against the pavement, and she fought to stay conscious, as a sea
of faces swam above her.
     "No..." she groaned.  She could remember, now.  This wasn't how it
happened.  They hadn't caught her.  She'd escaped.  Right?
     *Wrong,* Symon's voice echoed within her.  She looked up at him, and
saw him holding Kyoko's blood-drenched butcher knife.  *There's no escape,
this time around.*
     The red-tinted blade flashed down.

                                    -<=*=>-

     "Dreamlanders are here," Paranoia groaned to himself.  "ARCANA's pulling
out all the stops to get me."
     It didn't even hurt, to push his powers to this extent.  In fact, for
the first time in ages, he felt as though he could breathe, that the air
was no longer clogged with pollutants and the sharp tang of air conditioning.
People ran wild around him, fleeing from the fears that he was inflicting
upon them, fears he could see in his mind's eye.
     So long as they feared, they would leave him be, and the nuclear death-
beam emitting satellite above him would not let loose its destructive power.
Or, perhaps Atkinson had been lying, and was going to use it anyway.  The
thought sent fresh chills through Paranoia.
     There were familiar fears, here.  He wondered if he had encountered
some of those here before.  The imagery in their heads was disturbingly
familiar to him.
     He watched, trembling, while his hand reached into his coat to get out
his bottle of sunblock.

                                    -<=*=>-

     "No," Kaoru said, without emotion, as Rad ripped his arm off and started
beating him about the head with it.  "I don't want to die again."
     "Oh, come now," the Controller said to him, jovially.  "You love being
killed.  It's your regular saturday night thing."
     "Like, yah, bro," Rad said, as he opened up Kaoru's chest and pulled out
the atomic-powered mouse that had been turning the wheel inside his cheap,
radio-shack cyborg body.  "I mean, like, what else, like, do you have to show
for your, like, life?"
     He bit the head off the mouse, and promptly exploded.  The Controller
wasn't fazed at all.
     "You should have warned him about that, nein?" Dr. Madhatter asked.
"Tsch!  Best I could do on short notice."
     Kaoru, with complete clarity of mind, unblemished by emotion, screamed.
     "Hush," the Controller said.  "You're a Dalan.  You don't get to
experience pain.  Only death.  And rebirth.  And death again."
     "But you have emotions," Kaoru said.  "All my people do, now."
     "They're not Dalans, now," the Controller told him.  "They're people."
     "But I'm..." Kaoru started.
     "Artificial!" Dr. Madhatter told him.  "You are a gene-creche construct
of a gene-creche constructed artificial race that has long, long outlived its
organic creators.  You were tailored to grow inside a human female, to be
born into a human family so that you could grow and observe human society, to
pave the way for invasion."
     "I had emotions," Kaoru told him.  "I developed them -- I had to."
     "As did the implant agents on many other worlds the Dalans invaded, in
our invading days," the Controller said.  "We wiped their emotions, just as
we wiped yours."
     "Wiped...but you're killing me!" Kaoru insisted.
     "No one said the process was pretty," Dr. Madhatter told him.  "Some people
have to die three times before they stay dead inside.  Isn't that right, dear?"
     "Completely," Akane said, as Madhatter and the Controller stepped aside,
to let her through.  She hefted her left hand, flashing his glowing talons at
him.  "Like them?  They're yours.  Only part of you that's worth taking."
     "Akane," Kaoru said, unemotionally.  "Do not kill me again."
     "You should have stayed the way you were," Akane said.  "I'd have joined
you soon enough.  We could have killed our brothers and the rest of our
hypocritical family and sailed off to Dalan.  But no...you had to try to
reform.  Bad move."
     The talons stabbed into his brain, and Kaoru watched with detatched
puzzlement as they pulled yards of macrame string out of his head.
     The only part that hurt was that he couldn't feel anything.
     Anything at all.

                                    -<=*=>-

     "Transmission wavelengths are secure, sir," Special Agent Sutherland told
Special Special Agent Karina Selanova.
     A faint serenade of screaming poured from the speakers.  Karina ignored
the noise, focusing instead on the brainwave readouts on the screens in front
of her.
     "Have you patched in the case comparison profile?" she asked.
     "Yes, sir," Sutherland said.
     A few moments passed.
     "Sir?" Sutherland asked.
     "What is it, Sutherland?"
     "Why are we doing this?"
     "Explain," Selanova prompted.
     "Our mission profile is simple," Sutherland said.  "Capture Radian and
bring her in.  It's what we've been working towards for eight months now,
even the months when you were off in space."
     "You don't think sending Paranoia in is helpful?" Karina asked.  Sutherland
tried to judge her voice, to see if he was in dangerous waters.  She had
previously shown a degree of tolerance towards him, a familiarity unsullied by
condescention or guile, which was not typical of the other Special Special
Agents, for the most part.  It was important, he realized, not to push it too
far, though.
     "Our implanted monitors show that he's using his psi abilities to their
fullest," Sutherland said.  "Surely Radian is incapacitated, as is anyone in
the area who could help her..."
     "This isn't *just* about Radian, any more," Karina told him.
     "Does this mean you're expanding the mission profile?" Sutherland asked.
     "Yes."
     Sutherland frowned, slightly.
     "Less'll hit the fan when he hears."
     "I'll deal with him when the time comes," Selanova answered.
     A few more moments passed.
     "So what is our new, expanded mission profile?" Sutherland asked, with
forced casualness.
     "I can't tell you," Karina said.  "Now be quiet.  I have to think."
     Sutherland turned away, and watched the monitors.  The sounds of the
screaming from the speakers were the only sound inside the cold, metallic room
for quite a while.

                                    -<=*=>-

     "Are you ready, sister?" Ian asked.  "We will be within range of planet
Hottentot within the hour."
     "I have been ready for my destiny for a long time," Chelsa answered.
"Even as you have."  She relaxed, as Ian stroked her long, dusky blonde hair.
"Will he be surprised?  Surely he must suspect, by now."
     "Our father?" Ian asked.  "I hardly think so.  Still, even if he does
suspect, what can he do?  We are power."
     Chelsa nodded.
     Just one hour to go.  One hour until her destiny was at hand.

                                    -<=*=>-

     <<Ak...ne...me in...co..>>
     HAL's voice faded in and out of her ears, like a weak radio signal.
Radian ignored it, and fought to get free of the macrame string that had
started winding around her hand and was moving up her arm.
     *Gardening at night...* China whispered in her ear.  Akane turned her
head, to find Karina looking back at her, scared and hopeful.  The macrame
string was swallowing her up as well, only she wasn't struggling, she was
helping it along.
     "This isn't my garden," Akane said, as her only friend disappeared,
consumed by the macrame plants and the macrame vines that hung from the
macrame skylight.  Only they weren't macrame, after all.
     "Paginini," Akane said, taking a step.  "You don't want to do this."
     *But he does,* Symon told her.  *And you can't stop him this time.*
     -Face it, kid,- Andro, back in the form of the Cheshire Cat, purred
at her.  -You're in his garden this time.  He makes the rules.-
     -Excuse me,- Kyoko said.  -Anyone seen my hatchet?-
     *I loaned it to China,* Symon said.  *She should be around here,
somewhere.*
     Ho Moroboshi staggered by, a hatchet protruding from his chest.
     -Never mind, here it is,- Kyoko said.  She levitated up, pulled the
hatchet from his chest, and disappeared.
     "No!" Akane cried out, reaching for Ho.  He shrank away from her out-
stretched hand.  "You can't do this!"
     "Too late," a chilling, carefully controlled voice said.  Akane saw
the ten year old boy drop down from the bright reaches above, his movements
silent, calculated to frighten.  He wore black robes, and a large, black
hat, along with a white theatrical mask.
     "Now, I will get you back," Paranoia told her.  "Get you for what you've
made me become."
     Andro and Symon were gone.  She was alone.
     He advanced, and she tried to run, but her muscles wouldn't respond.
     "No running," he said, "now that I've stopped."
     She couldn't tell, but she felt that he was grinning, underneath his
white mask.

                                    -<=*=>-

     Juan forced himself not to shrink back, as everything inside him so
desperately cried for him to do.  If he entered his village, they would get
him.  Beside him, Andy the Coffeeburro brayed, in general agreement with this
view.
     When he saw them, waiting for him, his heart almost stopped right there.
How could they be alive, after their last encounter?  How could they be
back, to avenge their defeat?
     He forced himself forward.  Andy, despite his braying, did likewise.
     The silvery-haired woman watched him advance, victory already dancing in
her aging eyes.  Behind her, two men with white hair and beards watched,
doing their best to look threatening.
     "Hello," Juan said, at last.  "How are you this afternoon, Mrs. Olsen?"
     "I'm dead, thanks to you," Mrs. Olsen told him, severely.  "But I'm
back from my grave, as are the brothers Hill, to take our revenge upon you."
     "Oh, great," Juan deadpanned.  "Can I have a cup of coffee first?"

WILL JUAN GET HIS REQUESTED CUP OF COFFEE?
WILL RADIAN, SHADEBEAM, AND KAORU ESCAPE THE PSYCHIC HELLS THEY ARE BEING
     SUBJECTED TO?
WILL KARINA EXPLAIN JUST WHAT'S GOING ON?
HOW LONG CAN I GO WITHOUT MAKING SENSE?
WHAT'S A MACCABEE?

Superguy knows the answers.  Go bug him.

        Gary W. Olson         <^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
swede@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu  >  "If you're so special, why aren't you dead?"
     swede@drycas.bitnet      <      - The Breeders, "I Just Wanna Get Along"